Comms Dealer

Former advertising guru and software development expert Marshall Sherman (pictured) has launched a new enterprise aimed at helping channel businesses break into international markets.

Ghost Digital and Data (GD&D) is offering distributors, comms providers and independent software vendors a one-stop-shop for European expansion combining creative advertising with database development and language services for non-English speaking countries.

Sherman along with his new advertising partners has already executed a plan to take his own 'Alcatel-Lucent friendly' Amigo brand to Europe.

This required some serious challenges to be overcome, not least of which were the language barriers. Now he wants to make the service available to other third party software vendors and similar companies in the telecoms industry.

Sherman told Comms Dealer that GD&D aims to offer channel companies pain free overseas expansion at around a third of the cost currently paid by well financed corporates.

"In addition to our Europe-wide distribution service the key to this is that we have major international databases at our disposal and we can provide a complete service to address them encompassing call centre services, campaign creation from concept upwards, email development and execution through to email response handling and contact management.

"We have even designed html email templates with links embedded which enables companies to rapidly address their chosen databases with quality tailored messages."

GD&D is also offering language services to help ICT companies address specific European territories including the production of multi-lingual websites and marketing literature, translation of emails, software and manuals plus, crucially, pre and post-sales and responses to marketing activities by staff speaking the language of the country being addressed.

"Our services are principally aimed at ambitious mid-market and enterprise businesses looking to secure business abroad professionally and cost effectively on a recurring revenue basis, but we are also happy to work with SMEs and start-ups on a partial remuneration model based on leads generated, sales made or contract renewals," added Sherman.

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The appointment by Commsworld of Steve Thomson as Non-Executive Director (NED) is another sign of the company's growth ambitions. He replaces former NED Ian Blackford who becomes Chairman following the retirement of Malcolm Macpherson who held the post since 2000.

Thomson brings 35 years of business and banking experience to the Edinburgh-based firm after a long career in marketing and investment banking in Europe, Asia, North America and Russia, working for Burson Marsteller, Wickes, USB Philips & Drew, and latterly as a Managing Director of Credit Suisse First Boston and Moscow based United Financial Group.

Commsworld CEO, Ricky Nicol says the appointment is an endorsement of the advances Commsworld has made in recent years.

The firm will also draw on Thomson's Investor Research expertise. In 2000 he acquired a UK-based market intelligence service providing corporate clients worldwide with analysis of developments in the aviation industry in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltics and central Asia. He sold the business in 2013.

The 55-year-old, who is also on the Board of Highlands & Island Enterprise, said: "I was attracted to the NED role by the people and the business. But the most important factor is the amount of opportunity in the market due to how rapidly it is changing.

"Ricky and his team have built an impressive, robust business and I believe they are now in a great position to take that to the next level, which is what I would like to help with. I hope I can help Commsworld grow into new markets like the public sector, while also making its proposition more understandable to the non-tech savvy.\"

2014 was Commsworld's 20th year in operation and it marked the milestone by expanding its network services across Scotland and generating record revenues surpassing the £9 million turnover from the previous year.

Nicol said: "Steve brings a wealth of business experience that we will benefit from a great deal. He gives us a straight and measured opinion on the strategies we have in place and the plans we are looking to implement, while also helping with how to roll these out. This will be valuable as we approach another important year in the company’s growth.\"

Beecham Research predicts almost one billion cellular M2M connections worldwide by 2020, according to its new report.

The 'Global M2M Connectivity and Services Forecast' looks at the rapid rise of M2M since 2013 when there were just 172 million cellular M2M connections worldwide but also projects a note of caution in the face of increasing hype around the future of M2M and the Internet of Things (IoT).

"Our worldwide forecast has been constantly updated over a long period with direct, multiple contacts in all relevant countries worldwide," said Saverio Romeo, Principal Analyst at Beecham Research, where they have been studying the M2M market since 2001.

"As a result, we have a substantial up-to-date database to work with, built up from usage data on application sectors and connectivity technologies."

However, Romeo warned about the excessive hype surrounding some current M2M forecasts. "While the M2M market is growing strongly, we have seen some excessive predictions that simply create unrealistic expectations," he said.

"An average growth rate of nearly 30% per annum over the next few years represents both a very strong and exciting opportunity in a services market that is substantially business-to-business," said Robin Duke-Woolley, Founder and CEO of Beecham Research.

"Unfortunately there are some ludicrous, multi-billion connected device forecasts around at present for M2M and IoT that betray a complete lack of understanding about how the market really works.

"Much faster growth rates are just not realistic in this market because enterprises do not assimilate new technologies into their business processes that quickly."

Gamma has launched a dedicated Microsoft Lync website to help its existing and prospective channel partners realise the benefits of providing Microsoft Lync-compatible SIP trunks and to support them on their journey to unified communications.

SIP trunking services that integrate with Microsoft Lync allow users to make and receive calls on their desktop PC, mobile or any device using the Lync web client. This unshackles businesses from the 9-5 office environment and sets workforces free to work in a way that suits them.

Following its successful completion of the Microsoft Lync 2013 certification in early 2014 Gamma has seen an increase in demand for Microsoft Lync.

Paul Wakefield, SIP Product Manager at Gamma, said: "Resellers who are already providing customers with Microsoft Lync could benefit from adding SIP to their portfolio to offer a comprehensive end-to end-solution, leading to increased margins and customer retention.

"Our goal is to help our channel partners increase wallet share and leverage the opportunity that Microsoft Lync offers. If they don't, it will only be a matter of time before their competitors do."

With the option of a branded billing bureau, number flexibility and fraud management, combined with being approximately just one of ten SIP trunking service providers that are qualified to meet the Microsoft UCOIP requirements, Gamma believes its proposition gives resellers the edge to help them make more money out of the Lync stack.

John Pittaway, Sales Director at Risual commented: "As a long standing Microsoft Gold Partner, it's great to see how focused Gamma is on providing an end-to-end service by extending unified communications beyond the office environment with SIP and Microsoft Lync."

Gamma recently announced major SIP trunking pricing initiatives, offering free call termination to UK mobile and fixed destinations, including 01, 02 and 03 number ranges.

The communications provider believes that the move to a transactional model for SIP makes it easier to administer and provides a real differentiator based around price rather than features.

Smaller resellers in Europe are growing faster than their larger counterparts, helped by expansion in key vertical markets such as the Public Sector, Bank/Finance/Insurance and Manufacturing/Industry.

Healthcare is rising fast as a category of interest to resellers. Security is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the fastest growing area of business for VARs in Europe, says IT Europa in its latest database report: Solutions VARs in Europe - the Top 500.

In the report, and looking back at the last year for which complete figures were available, total revenues of all companies included increased 29.13% in 2013 over comparable numbers for 2011. From 2012 to 2013 revenues increased just 3.98%, however.

There has been considerable movement of names up and down the list as many of the larger companies have acquired, sold off divisions and moved work outside Europe.

In 2014, the most popular vertical markets which companies were catering to were: the Public Sector (67.2% of companies); Bank/Finance/Insurance (59.4%); Manufacturing/Industry (58%); Retail (49.6%); and Healthcare (39.4%).

The fastest growing areas of activity for VARs were: security (68.23% of companies); mobility (30.17%); accountancy (13.22%); e-procurement (13.11%); and application infrastructure (13.02%). The only markets which declined were: e-commerce/Internet (-145.72%), and Supply Chain Management (-179.8%).

Other notable horizontal segments include: storage (17.6%); Business Intelligence/analytics (13.8%); networking (9.4%); and virtualisation (9.4%).

Of the 500 companies profiled, 14 were parent companies of groups of companies, 55 subsidiary companies, 418 independents and 13 publicly listed and the total revenues for all companies in the report reached $44.7 billion.

The parent companies saw total revenues decline by 6% while the best performers were subsidiary companies with 11.02% increase in revenues in 2012-2013; followed by independent companies with 6.15% increase; and public companies with 4.72% increase. Only 6.8% of the companies in the report have staff numbers greater than 1000, two thirds have fewer than 100.

The largest geographic markets in terms of 2013 revenue (the last complete year for which reported figures are available) are (in descending order): United Kingdom (total revenues of $11 billion); Germany ($8.36 billion); France ($5.95 billion); Spain ($4.34 billion); Italy ($2.56 billion); Netherlands ($1.89 billion); Austria ($1.61 billion); Denmark ($1.2 billion); and Norway ($1.18 billion). The 10 largest geographic markets covered in terms of numbers of companies profiled are: Germany (89 companies); United Kingdom (87); Italy (48); France (47); Spain (33); Poland (28); Netherlands (22); Russia (18); Turkey (15); and Austria (13).

In terms of revenue increases across geographic markets in the period of 2012-2013, Bulgaria is the best performer with 48.58% revenue growth. The second best performer is Belarus with 29.38%, followed by Lithuania (29.3%); Czech Republic (12.48%) and then Turkey (11.91%).

In this report, all Nordic countries experienced revenue growth: Sweden (8.85%), Norway (7.62%), Iceland (6.66%), Finland (4.06%), and Denmark (1.45%). In the previous report, Denmark and Sweden experienced revenue decline (-2.44% and -6.48% respectively).

The UK market is positioned at 31 and experienced revenue decline of -4.06%, compared to 21.48% revenue growth in the last published report. Similarly, in the last published report, Belgium experienced the highest revenue growth of 31.1%, but in this report experienced revenue decline of -1.71%.

The places where it was hardest to be a VAR, which experienced revenue decline in both 2012 and 2014 were: Slovak Republic (-29.26%; -25.61%), Portugal (-14.2%; -13.8%) and Greece (-17.41%; -2.77%) in 2012 and 2014 respectively.

www.iteuropa.com

Basingstoke-based Southern Communications has been ranked 49th in the 2015 Southern Tech 100 listing.

The company now employs over 140 staff and has seen annual turnover grow by 50% during the past three years.

Paul Bradford, CEO, said: "This is a great result for Southern Communications. We are seeing a drive in the direction of cloud and hosted services from our customers. The way businesses communicate is changing at a pace as they look to embrace the flexibility and mobility offered by cloud-based technology and BYOD environments, while maintaining the functionality of their traditional telecommunications."

Diva Telecom's reseller partners will have more time on their hands following the launch of a new one-stop portal in March.

The platform provides fast access to a single interface that manages Diva's portfolio, including its white labelled SMS and audio conferencing services and access to WLR3.

The system was developed in-house and also incorporates CRM and a billing platform, meaning that Diva customers do not need to rent or buy their own.

Diva recently appointed Kevin Harrison as Head of Sales and part of his remit is to drive channel development and adoption of the Diva Partner Portal.

He brings 25 years experience in the industry including 16 years in channel development.

Harrison said: "We are always looking for ways to make life easier for our customers and felt resellers would benefit from being able to manage everything from one place, including their billing."

IPGENIE is gearing up to launch IPGENIE v3, the latest version of its UC platform which includes additional features such as SMS, presence, web call back and outbound dialers.

Also included is a new contact directory that will enables users to import directly from their current contact database including Salesforce, SugarCRM, Sage and Google.

The IPGENIE solution operates through a licence agreement based on the number of extensions using the software. The customer will have Bria soft phones on site, and users will be able to accept calls on their wireless desktop handset - a 'regular' desk phone which works on Wi-Fi - as well as on their iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows OS devices and even tablets.

Paul McWilliams, Technical Director at IPGENIE, said: "Our new offering provides high end features at a low cost and will allow businesses in the UK and Ireland to save money on their telephony costs."

Annodata has bolstered its print capabilities following the acquisition of STS, a provider of managed print services. The acquisition was funded entirely by Annodata's existing cash reserves and pushes its annual revenues above £80m with over 400 employees.

Based in Wetherby STS has developed a niche in specialist print services and works with both the public and private sector organisations including William Hill, the Manchester Evening News and the Yorkshire Post.

The acquisition fills a gap in an area where Annodata has not traditionally focused - wide format specialised printing.

The additional turnover from STS is expected to approach £3m per annum.

The two businesses will be integrated in full, with Annodata's Leeds office set to be relocated to STS's offices in Wetherby.

STS's existing staff including the Managing Director Peter Langstaff will remain in situ.

Martin St. Quinton, Annodata's Chairman, commented: "STS has an impressive portfolio of longstanding customers including national and local newspaper groups and, much like Annodata, is particularly strong in the housing association market.

"Vendor agnostic and with a strong, profitable business model, STS is a great fit for Annodata."

Langstaff added: "Becoming part of the Annodata Group is good news for our staff and, importantly, for our customers, who will benefit from the additional resources and capabilities that a company of Annodata's size and breadth can offer.

"In addition, it means that suppliers will have the opportunity to pitch for a larger amount of expenditure by Annodata, given the increased revenues."

Exponential-e has appointed Jonathan Bridges as Head of Enterprise Cloud with a remit to develop agile propositions that help businesses transition from legacy IT infrastructures to private cloud platforms.

Lee Wade, CEO, said: "Jonathan brings a deep understanding of the cloud and we are confident that he will be able to use this to help our customers extract greater value from their investments and accelerate the adoption of cloud-based infrastructures.

"The cloud has become an integral part of IT systems, with recent research from the Cloud Industry Forum revealing that 78 per cent of UK organisations have adopted at least one Cloud-based solution.

"However, businesses are still resistant to moving all IT operations into a hosted environment, often starting their journey in stages. Using his specific emphasis on value-based selling, I am confident that Jonathan will play a key role in enabling Exponential-e to continue advancing forward in a high growth, competitive market."

Bridges brings 17 years of IT experience to the role and has held a number of leadership roles within the enterprise software space, helping organisations to scale and execute Cloud initiatives.

He was instrumental in developing Fujitsu's first Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering and was accountable for driving the adoption of cloud services within COLT's enterprise division across Europe.

He has created and managed many teams in the UK and Europe, providing multi-region delivery of sales, projects and ongoing operations. Bridges's most recent role was as Global Head of Business Development for Canopy's Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) portfolio.

Bridges added: "In a constantly evolving marketplace, it is those organisations that can adapt, stay nimble and innovate rapidly that are poised to succeed."